ROSE FESTIVAL – KELAA M’GOUNA, MOROCCO

In May 2013, the Media Diversity Institute invited me to represent them at the Rose Festival in Kelaa M’Gouna, Morocco, as a media consultant. I recorded and produced audio podcasts exploring what the local Moroccans and the Amazigh people (previously known as the Berber) thought about the Moroccan media coverage of this special event. Their responses were quite mixed and contradictory.  On the one hand some people thought the coverage was positive as it brought the media and government to this isolated region, and improvements had occurred over the last few years in the education and health sectors , on the other hand, others believed that in actuality it had not made a difference to people's lives.
It was my first time in this part of Morocco, a most unexpected and magical place called the Vallée des Roses, within the Dades valley, tucked between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara desert. In spring, the entire Dades Valley becomes a sea of small pink Persian roses. These roses are the valley’s life-blood, from cultivation to the production of rose water and rose oil. In mid-May, the harvesting of the roses is celebrated with a three-day festival of entertainment, music, dance, horse and sword displays – and a showcase for all the rose products and local distilleries. The Rose Festival draws around 20,000 Moroccans and a few tourists. The whole town bathes in a unique rose fragrance and pays homage to this most beautiful flower, on which the inhabitants’ livelihood depends.

Through meeting the wonderful Moulay El Hassan, who became a friend and a guide, I had the chance to visit a traditional distillery run by women: Association Feminine pour le Développement de la Famille OUED – DADES AFDF, in Douar Ait Majber. It aims to help women gain financial independence, combat isolation and segregation, support mothers and children with access to education and heath services, educate the youth on environmental issues, the preservation of the environment and its biodiversity, eco tourism and fair trade with the intention of bringing remuneration to the locals working on the land. 

We were welcomed with a most delicious breakfast consisting of freshly made bread and apricot jam, homemade butter, olives and honey.  And Moroccan tea of course!  It was so good to eat all of this food in the distillery's courtyard,  and to know that it came from this land, from these people, who shared it so generously with us.

To observe the traditional process involved to make rose oil and rose water was quite a revelation.  I had no idea that it took  60,000 roses to make 1 ounce of rose oil, equivalent to 29.57 ml.

To find myself surrounded by so many roses in this remote part of Morocco, was a truly magical moment.  Here are some photographs from our visit, several taken by Mai-Britt Wulf, the lovely German journalist with whom  I was traveling, others by Hamid - a young, friendly and talented Moroccan media student, and some by me.